


Road to Salvation

by matrixrefugee



Category: Road to Perdition (2002)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 06:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15018950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: An epilogue to the film: Twenty years later, Michael Sullivan jr. shares his story with a mysterious young man seeking the truth about Mike Sullivan





	Road to Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> I am a devout Catholic, and I was a little dismayed that the film version of RtP cut some of the stronger Catholic elements used in the graphic novel it was based on (question: does anyone here know if Max Allen Collins is Catholic, because he sure thinks like one if he isn't.). I mean, the last page of the graphic novel just blew me away. My friend Mark felt the same way: he wasn't nearly as enthused with this film as I was, but he liked the novel. So I thought I'd write an epilogue fic for the film, which ties in elements from the novel…and does a bit more.

Twenty years almost to the day that my father and I set out on that long road that ended in Perdition, the archdiocese of Rock Island transferred me to St. Peter's Parish in that city in the winter of 1951.

The town hadn't changed much, or at least it looked that way when I first passed through. But once I started walking its streets, reacquainting myself, I noticed some of the shops had changed hands. Some of the old faces were missing, and faces that were young when I was a boy, had now aged.

Since I came, I've hardly heard much about the old days when John Rooney ruled the Tri-Cities. The soldiers recently back from the war and their brides and young families have renewed the town. To Rock Island, the days of the Rooney mob and their ties to Capone in Chicago are just a bad dream that has passed. But that dream has colored my whole existence.

That's why I chose to become a priest. The day my father died, I promised to myself and his spirit that I would never carry a gun ever, not even to serve my country. There are other ways to serve.

I beat the draft: I got called up even though I was in seminary at the time, but I failed the psyche evaluation. That winter of 1931 left me scarred emotionally, not enough to leave me permanently unhinged, but enough that I couldn't handle the strain of serving. Even to this day, a car backfiring can leave me shaking for hours. My role in my father's scheme to bleed Capone also left me suspect, so I was Four-F on two counts, which left me to continue my studies for the priesthood in peace.

Wednesday afternoon of that first week, I heard confessions, an onerous task, really, but with the most rewards. No other duty of a priest most closely resembles Christ carrying His cross, for the priest stands in the place of Christ, to Whom, through him, the penitents can transfer their burden.

The usual file of people passed through: children with their peccadilloes, housewives with theirs, adult versions of the former, a few businessmen, a young working girl who confessed frankly that she'd necked with a young man the night before.

No one came after that, but then I heard footsteps approach the confessional. A moment of quiet, then the curtain veiling the penitent's half of the confessional lifted. Through the screen between us, I glimpsed a young man's slim shadow against the light, before he closed the curtain.

The kneeler on the other side creaked. He was quiet, but only for a moment. "I'm not a Catholic, Father, at least not yet, though I'm being baptized into the Church this Easter. My mother had her trouble with some people in the Church, so she didn't raise me Catholic. But I just wanted to talk to you, make a confession," he said in a husky tenor voice that seemed vaguely familiar, though I couldn't place it.

"I'm afraid I can't give you absolution," I said.

"Understood," he said. He admitted a few minor doubts and questions about the Faith he was adopting, even as a girl might be doubtful about the young man she was about to marry.

"I got to the verge of fornication with a girl…one of my worst habits."

I briefly and tactfully counseled him, assuring him that his doubts were understandable, that it might even be a cause for concern if he didn't go through this phase.

"One last thing, Father," he said. "Please…pray for the soul of my father. He came to a terrible end after a terrible life, and he died without the Last Sacrament."

"All the more reason for him to be prayed for. But would you tell me his name or your name, just so I can have a reference point?"

A pause. "Just think of me as the Historian." I didn't blame him for being evasive. It really was an impertinent question. "Thanks, Father, I needed to hear that."

With that, I heard the kneeler creak as he got up and left.

I couldn't help feeling for the young man. He and I were alike, just from the little he'd said: our fathers had come to a tragic end. At least my father had the benefit of the sacraments, that I'd been able to get him to a church in Perdition before he died of his wounds, but my heart went out to this young man.

At Mass the next day, I prayed for soul of my father, Michael Sullivan, and for the father of "the Historian" whoever he was.

A week later, I had a house call to make, bringing the Blessed Eucharist to an old woman who lay dying, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. I could dimly remember her as a middle-aged woman with younger children my age, in a time that seemed part of another lifetime.

Afterwards, the old woman, Mrs. Templeton, looked up at me with a gleam of recognition in her faded gray eyes. "I know you, Father. You were Mike Sullivan's older boy. Yer younger brother Peter used to play with my Fergus."

"Yes, I remember that," I said, smiling.

"What happened to you? What made you leave town for so long—'sides yer being in the seminary?"

"My father and I moved out of town after my mother and brother died," I said. Not a lie: she didn't have to know the whole sordid truth of the matter.

I thought nothing more about that until later that day, when I was hearing confessions.

Just before the hour ended, I glimpsed a young man's shadow across the parted curtain. He began his non-sacramental confession as he had last week: still having doubts with his faith, which he went into at greater length, but this time he'd had no trouble with the fair sex.

"Father, before I go, could I ask you a personal question?" he asked.

"Of course, I deserve to be pestered after I was so impertinent last week," I said.

"You're Father Michael Sullivan, right?"

"I am."

A long pause. "Are you by any chance related to Mike Sullivan, the "Angel of Death", who used to work as an enforcer for the mob that used to be out here?"

"He was my father," I said, my heart in my throat. "I'm his son."

"That's all I needed to know," he said. And with that, he got up and left the confessional.

I got to wondering why he would ask this question. Perhaps he'd heard rumors from someone, one of the older members of the community.

At supper in the rectory that evening, I asked Father Carradine, the pastor, if he knew about a young man who was being received into the church that Easter who might be a historian or a writer of some sort.

"I don't know his name," Father Carradine admitted. "He goes to a parish across the river in Davenport, but he works as a newspaper writer for one of the papers here in town. He's around, but he's very private, if you know what I mean."

I knew that well, for I did it myself. I wanted people to think of me as Father Michael Sullivan, nothing more.

Another sick call that evening brought me into the neighborhood of the Rooney mansion over on Twentieth Street.

The old pile still stood, somewhat in disrepair, the iron gates rusted and the building badly gone to seed. Somehow that brought me a sense of relief, but I still felt a twinge of fear as I looked up at it.

The following week, I half anticipated "the Historian" coming for his weekly non-sacramental confession. This time he talked about his difficulties "wrapping [his] skull around the finer points" as he put it.

"I can accept the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity," he said. "It's perfectly rational. God wanted to show that there was something unusual about this man Jesus, so He set Him apart in an age where having a bunch of kids was the norm. And on the human level…I'm not a father yet, I've yet to find the right woman to marry, but if God asked me to be the foster-father of His Son, I wouldn't want any other kids. That one special child alone would suffice.

"It's just this matter of the virginal birth of Christ. It's not that I don't doubt God could have worked some miracle to show how unique His Son was. But how did He do it? I mean, I helped a pregnant woman birth her child in the back of a taxicab. I know what happens."

"It's hard to grasp. St. Alphonsus Ligouri speaks of the Christ Child entering the world as a ray of light passing through glass."

The Historian let out a mildly exasperated sigh. "I've heard that before. Mind you, Father, I'm a newspaperman. I deal in facts: who, what, where, when, why, how, and the facts to answer those questions. I'm not one to waste much time on poetic sentiment. Granted, it has its place, but under my hat isn't the most comfortable place for it."

"Understood. There's more to being a believing Catholic than pious sentiment; there's often too many who waste more energy than is wise on that."

"Which is why the Church needs unsentimental creatures like me." He paused but only for a brief moment. "Speaking of which, I've started collecting information toward writing a book."

"Oh? What about?"

A long pause. "It's about the rise and fall of the Rooney clan here in Rock Island. I was wondering, Father, if you'd be interesting in helping me."

"Helping you? I'm only a priest, what could I do?"

"You told me last week that you're Mike Sullivan's son. I was wondering if you know some things no one else does."

"My father and I weren't very close, I'm afraid," I told him. "He kept his profession very well hidden from my brother and I. He had to."

A disappointed silence ensued, so quiet it all but echoed. "Okay, I've overstepped the mark again. Mea culpa, Father," he said, with just enough humor to dispel the disappointment.

I heard the kneeler creak as he got up and left. I suddenly feared he would not come back. I wanted to get out of the confessional and run after him, apologize, but another penitent came in right after him.

It rained that night, a hard pounding rain, as fierce as the rain that fell that long ago night I had stowed away under the rear seat of my father's Ford. That evening, I sat alone in my room in the rectory, trying to jot down ideas for a sermon at the nine a.m. Mass next morning. But the rain lashing at the window just inches from the head of the desk kept causing my mind to wander. Images flashed through my mind's eye like bolts of lightning, like images caught on film:

The alley behind the warehouse. The light through the gap under the door where I peeped through. My father standing across it. Mr. Rooney's son Connor arguing with Finn McGovern, angering the man. McGovern rising to lunge at Connor, only to be flung back when the younger man shot him through the temples. McGovern's men trying to open fire on my father and Connor. The thunder of my father's machine gun pulsed through my head as if it were happening all over.

I came back to the present. Almost an hour had gone by and I hadn't written anything for the sermon. I set the memories aside and set to work.

But as if in rebuke, the memories came back with a vengeance as I tried to sleep. It seemed my father and I were on that endless road once again, hopping all over the face of the Midwest, hitting the Capone Outfit where it hurt them the worst: in the money belt. All the while, a specter in a bowler hat and a black topcoat, armed with a camera and a gun, trailed us, dogging our path.

The dream ended with a sequence I had dreamt before, but which always presented itself whenever my dreams brought me back to that road.

The lake house. Going up, the dog at my heels, following my father inside. Two shots ring out. Try to run up the hallway, but my feet stick to the floor. Turn the corner into the large main room. Find my father there, lying on his side, bleeding profusely, his shirt already soaked crimson, his eyes starting to glaze, but fighting it.

A lean figure in black crouched over him like a vampire, peering through the viewfinder of a camera on a tripod. I tried to reach for the still smoking handgun lying on the table to the right of the door, but suddenly my feet seemed nailed to the floor. Before I could reach it, in one fluid movement the apparition in black had turned and snatched up the gun, turned toward me its scarred, well-shaped face, leveled the gun at me and fired.

I awoke sweating and shaking. I sat up in bed, feeling my brow to see it was intact. It was…just a dream, just a dream…

"Did you sleep all right, Father Michael?" Father Carradine asked me the next morning after Mass, when I came into the rectory for breakfast.

"No, I'm afraid," I admitted. "I was dreaming about my father, what happened to him."

"Now what brought that on, your coming back here to your old surroundings?"

"Possibly, but I think it has more to do with the Historian: he's working on a book about Rock Island and the Rooney clan. He wanted to know more about my father."

"And did you tell him anything?"

"No, I chickened out on him," I said, making fun of myself.

It bothered my soul so much through that day, that after lunch, I asked Father Carradine to hear my confession.

"So you refused to help this young man?" he said, when I had finished.

"Yes, Father," I admitted.

"All right, for that you penance is to write down what you remember and give the text to the Historian when you hear from him next."

"I had that in mind as my penance," I said.

"Then it's only fitting."

I went out for my usual walk after supper. The rain and clouds had given way, and the sunlight glinted off the crusty snow by the roadside and in people's yards. The sky overhead had given way to a clean blue with hardly a cloud to mar it, like the sky that morning my father and I first drove into Chicago.

I went to Haskell's Drugstore, what had been McGowan's when I was twelve. I browsed for a few moments, stalling myself or screwing my courage to the sticking point before I went to the stationary shelves. I found a maroon faux-leather journal with lined blank pages and bought it.

I took it back to the rectory, went into my study and sat down at the desk. A million distractions popped into my head. I remembered that one of the light bulbs in the bathroom needed changing, that I had a letter to write to Sister Frances at St. Peter's Home for Boys... No, I told all these thoughts that I had another concern to attend to. For my sake, and for the Historian's sake. This was a path I had to travel down if I was ever to come to the end of that road that had led to Perdition.

There are many stories about Michael Sullivan. Some say he was a decent man. Some say there was no good in him at all. But I once spent six weeks on the road with him in the winter of 1931. This is our story.

My memories, like some people's dreams, are in black and white…  
I sat there for most of the afternoon, pouring out my soul onto the pages of the journal, letting it bleed out through the nib of the pen. I got up only for supper and to attend to other matters. I expected to be pelted with calls and callers, but it seemed as if the All Mighty were blessing me with a few minutes of peace in which to write.

I worked well into the night. It was some of the most difficult writing I ever had attempted, harder even than writing a sermon, harder because I had to reach deep into places I had hardly dared look into much in the past twenty years. But finally my mind grew too cloudy with sleep to let me go on and I laid down my pen long enough to rest.

The next day and the following days, I wrote intermittently, remembering fragments, trying to put them into some chronological order. The work took so much out of me emotionally and the images in memory were so intense that I could barely concentrate. I took a lot of walks to clear my head.

I finished writing the last few lines when I was preparing to hear confessions the following Wednesday, the day the Historian usually came.

But that day, I did not hear his energetic step approach the confessional, or his voice beyond the screen. The hour passed, but he did not come. And I had the book in the pocket of my cassock, but he did not come.

It served me right. I had been so brusque with him. Besides, who in their right mind would want to read the account of my father's life?

That evening, when I went back to my room, I put the book in the back of the drawer on my desk. Perhaps someday, someone would find it and read it.

The Wednesday of the week before Holy Week, two weeks after the Historian had asked me his guileless question, I heard what I hoped was his step approaching the confessional.

The curtain rustled and opened. The kneeler creaked.

"I've got just one week and a half to go before the moment of truth, Father," said the Historian's voice.

"Think you can hold out?" I asked, teasing.

He laughed, a quiet, half-suppressed chuckle. "By God's grace, I hope I can." He admitted his few final doubts, his irritation with people who were interfering with or trying to discourage his research.

"I'm afraid I contributed to your feelings," I admitted. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right: I'm a reporter and y' gotta have a thick skin to follow that line of work. No harm done. Don't think my absence had anything to do with it." He paused, then more soberly, he added, "My mother died and I was up in Chicago helping my half-sister."

"I'm very sorry to hear that," I said.

"Would you remember her at Mass? I'll slip the donation for the stipend under the door…I probably should add one for my father, too."

"Go right ahead," I said. I added, "Actually, I don't have it with me now, but I have something for you, something I need to give you."

"Oh?"

"You asked me to tell you what I knew about my father, and I told you I didn't know much. Well, I only told you half the truth. So, in penance, I wrote down all that I know about my father. If you're still interested, I could give you the journal its in, next time you're here."

"That would be great. That would be ideal."

"I'll be sure to have it with me the next time you come in for your unofficial confessions."

"Perhaps I should stop beating around the bush and we should meet face to face."

"It's your call."

"The Elwood Diner, on the road up to the lake. You know where that is?"

"Yes," I said.

"Let's meet there next week, next Wednesday about five, five-thirty in the afternoon."

"I'll be there. But how will I know you?"

"Just look for a tall, dark, not very handsome young man," he said. "I'll be at a table inside, writing in a notebook."

"I'll be there with bells on," I promised.

As he headed out, I heard his step approach the door of the confessional. Something slid under the door, then I heard him step away.

Father Tobin, the other young curate, agreed to take my calls for the rest of the day Holy Wednesday, while I headed out to Elwood. For some reason, I felt nervous. Who was this "Historian"? He seemed to know quite a bit about me, but I guess that came from his research for this book of his. All I had to go by was the name on the scrap of paper he'd slipped me when he gave me the donation for the Mass for his parents "Martha Connelly-Russo and the Historian's father".

It hit me as I pulled into the lot of the diner: I had been down this road before. This highway led up to Lake Michigan. My father and I had traveled it when we tried to get to Perdition, but something had made us take a detour…

The town had grown up. More houses and shops clustered around the diner, but it still looked much the same as it had twenty years before: same time of year, the turning of winter into spring, same time of day, twilight.

I had written about that terrible night when my father and I had nearly been killed on this very spot. The memory exploded in my mind.

Peering out the back window of my father's Ford as we sped away, the tall, lean stranger in black taking aim at the back window. "Get down!" my father ordered.

"Why?" my younger self asked, petulant.

"GET DOWN!" my father shouted, pushing me down and ducking his own head.

A shot broke the back window, sending shards of glass flying, falling over me. Luckily, neither of us got hit.

That was the first time I ever saw the man my father would refer to as the Reporter, the vampire-shadow that haunted my dreams.

I drew in a long breath and got out of my car. Everything would be all right. The Reporter had been dead these twenty years now. I walked to the door of the diner, opened it, and went in.

Once inside, I scanned the scattering of customers, looking for a "tall, dark, not very handsome" young man.

At a table close to the door, near a window, sat a dark young man with his head bent over a notebook. I approached his table and sat down, facing him.

He looked up.

A thin, tapered face looked back at me, large bright eyes of an odd gray-green-blue shade, dark brownish black hair brushed back from a high forehead. He called himself not very handsome, but he had the kind of looks women call "boyishly good-looking". He might have been about ten years my junior, but it was hard to say.

He stood up. "Father Sullivan?" he asked.

Even the voice, a husky sort of tenor, was similar.

Another face, very like his, appeared in my mind's eye, only the look in the eyes was different: cold, hardened, almost animal, and the skin was pitted with scars and scabs all along the left side. I caught myself trembling at the memory.

"Are you the Historian?" I asked.

He smiled. "Yes, I am."

"Sit down: I brought the book," I said, taking it out of my pocket. "It's not the kind of story you want to discuss in public, so I wrote it all down when I could spare the moments." I handed the book to him across the table.

He took it, opened it, his eyes scanning the pages. They misted over slightly, but only for a moment. After a long while, he looked up at me.

"You went through hell," he said.

"We all go through our own version," I said.

He shook his head sagely. "Not like this. You must be made of stern stuff to have come through it all unscathed."

"I still have the scars on my soul. I pray for my father's soul every day at every Mass I offer. And I'm praying for your father's soul as well."

With a twist of a smile in one corner of his mouth, he said, "Do you have any idea who I am?"

"I think I do," I said. I drew in a long breath and in a lowered voice I said, "You look very much like…the man who shot my father."

"Did you know his name?"

"My father used to refer to him as the Reporter."

The Historian paused, dropping his gaze to the book under his hand. He looked up at me. "His name was Harlen Maguire. He was a reporter, but he also worked as an assassin for Frank Nitti, Capone's second in command. I barely knew the man. He and my mother never married, though they came close to it. My mother found out what he was doing for Nitti and she left him. She told me…she wanted to name me after him, but she couldn't do it. She wanted me to have his stamina and focus at whatever I chose to do in life, but please God that I never went down that dark path to ruin he chose."

"What's your name?"

"Right now it's Halloran Connelly-Russo, but in a few days it will be Harlen Joseph Michael Maguire."

I wasn't sure why, but I had tears in my eyes. I reached across the table and put a brotherly hand on his wrist.

"I'm sorry for what happened," he said.

"If it hadn't happened that way, I doubt we'd be here now or we'd be the men we are now. Is that why you're writing this book of yours?"

"It's one of them. We can't change the past, but we can shed the proper light on it so we can better understand where we're going."

I released his hand and rapped on the journal. "This will help you, and I'll do whatever else I can to help."

I slept better that night than I had in a while. A ghost had been laid to rest, a demon named and vanquished.

Next morning a call came from St. Stephen's Parish across the river in Davenport. One Halloran Connelly-Russo wanted to transfer to St. Peter's and be baptized there.

On Holy Saturday Evening, I administered the first adult baptism of my priestly life. I had the honor of pouring the baptismal waters over the head of Harlen Maguire's son:

"Harlen Joseph Michael, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen."

He lifted his dripping head from the font and looked up at me. Father Tobin helped blot his face and hair dry with a towel but I knew some of the drops on Harlen's face did not come from the water I had poured.

The following afternoon, Easter Sunday, I went to the Chippiannock Cemetery, to the five acres reserved for the Catholics of Rock Island, St. Mary's Hill.

I had to walk through the Rooneys' lot to get to the corner where my family was buried. I read the stones as I passed them: John James 1860-1931; Kathleen Maura Kelly, Beloved Wife of John James Rooney 1865-1925; Connor Francis, Son of John James and Kathleen Maura, 1898-1931.

I spotted a tall figure in a neatly tailored gray spring suit, standing nearby among the stones, jotting something in a notebook. He looked up at me.

"Come to remember, Father?" Harlen asked.

"Yes," I said. "Would you want to join me?"

He gave me a crooked grin. "You sure I won't disturb your father?"

"He'd understand."

I reached out and put an arm around his shoulder as I led him to the spot, a corner I had not been able to visit since I first came back to Rock Island. Three simple stones, a foot and a half on a side marked the final resting places of my family: Peter David Sullivan 1921-1931, Anne Louise McGinnis Sullivan, 1902-1931, and my father, Michael Declan Sullivan, 1890-1931.

I knelt beside them. I know I prayed, but more than that, I emptied my heart to them and to God. I know my father would have been proud to see what I've become, but I think his heart would have overflowed to see I hadn't forgotten what led me there.

I felt someone touch my shoulder. I looked up to find Harlen had put a brotherly hand there. I think he was praying, but his face bore a cool look clearly intended to mask what went on under his hat. After a moment, he looked at me. I covered his hand with one of mine and let him go. This trial had helped me find not only find a friend, but also a brother.


End file.
